For the first time in nearly four years, OPD adds new police officers to its ranks

The Oakland Police Department welcomed ten new officers Monday morning, for the first time since the 2008 layoffs, after being awarded $10 million dollars in funding from the U.S. Department of Justice.

“I have been working so long to bring all of you back here,” Mayor Jean Quan said, addressing the ten officers, who were all prior OPD employees, from a podium in the center of a small room at OPD headquarters. “You are the last of all the people that were laid off in 2008, and you should be proud of that for staying in there.”

The funding to pay for increased policing, a grant from the federal Office of the Community Policing Program, allows OPD to hire 25 new officers. The new hires will fill needs left by those police who were recently assigned to certain high-crime streets and schools as part of Quan’s “100 Block Plan,” an effort aimed at one Oakland area that Quan has said is the site of 92% of the city’s violent crime.